Unpacked with Ron Harvey
People Always Matter. Join Ron as he unpacks leadership with his guests.
Unpacked with Ron Harvey
Empowering Leadership Transformation in Modern Times
Louise, founder of Mowbray by Design, joins us for a compelling exploration of leadership in a world driven by rapid change and technological advancements. Drawing from her rich background in investment banking, technology, and global executive search, Louise shares invaluable insights on adaptability and the power of future-focused thinking. Discover how her work on the books "Uncertainty" and "Relevant, Future-Focused Leadership" shapes her perspective on leadership, and learn the courage it takes to amplify one's voice in today’s complex landscape.
Conscious leadership and systems thinking take center stage as we explore how integrating humanity and integrity into business practices can foster growth and challenge the status quo. Louise shares her vision for selecting clients who resonate with these core values and building systems that nurture holistic growth. By emphasizing people-centered practices, we uncover strategies for creating healthier work environments where personal and professional growth are not just buzzwords, but foundational elements of success.
Self-awareness emerges as a cornerstone for navigating uncertainty and enhancing decision-making. Louise reveals techniques for understanding our reactions to complex situations and how mentoring and coaching can propel personal growth. As we navigate the post-COVID era, the conversation shifts to the challenges of hybrid work models and rapid turnover, urging leaders to adapt and embrace change. Through acceptance, forgiveness, and a future-oriented vision, this episode provides a roadmap for leaders ready to step into a new era of growth and accountability.
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Just Make A Difference: Leading Under Pressure by Ron Harvey
“If you don’t have something to measure your growth, you won’t be self-aware or intentional about your growth.”
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Disclaimer:
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or entity. The information provided in this podcast is intended for educational and informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. Listeners should consult with their own professional advisors before implementing any suggestions or recommendations made in this podcast. The speakers and guests are not responsible for any actions taken by listeners based on the information presented in this podcast. The podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice or services. The speakers and guests make no representations or warranties of any kind, express or implied, about the completeness, accuracy, reliability, suitability or availability with respect to the information, products, services, or related graphics contained in this ...
Welcome to Unpacked Podcast with your host leadership consultant, ron Harvey of Global Core Strategies and Consulting. Ron's delighted to have you join us as he unpacks and shares his leadership experience, designed to help you in your leadership journey. Ron believes that leadership is the fundamental driver towards making a difference. So now to find out more of what it means to unpack leadership, here's your host, ron Harvey.
Speaker 2:And good morning. This is Ron Harvey, the Vice President, chief Operating Officer for GlobalCore Strategies and Consulting, which is a leadership firm. My wife and I have been in business for about 10 years but everybody knows. If you're following us and you're watching our show, you know I pause every week and I do recordings with leaders from around the world all different backgrounds that bring a really phenomenal perspective. I've learned a lot, I've shared a lot. I've built a lot of friendships and relationships through these conversations. Most importantly, I think we've shared a lot of information that's helping leaders as we figure this leadership out across the globe.
Speaker 2:So I'm super excited to always bring guests on that add value to you, at the same time giving them some awareness and visibility on my platform, because we do run businesses and we do like helping and most of them enjoy what they're doing and helping other people. So I'm super excited to have Luis on here with us. She's joining us and I'll let her tell you where she's joining, from different locations, because I want you to know that it's important that you never put barriers or boundaries in what you can do, and this virtual platform has allowed me to reach people I probably would have never ever met if I had to get on an airplane, and so I'm super excited. So, louise, I'm going to hand you the microphone. I'm going to step aside and share whatever you can promote books, you can tell us about your business. What would you want us to know about you before we dive into some fun conversations?
Speaker 3:Thank you, Ron, and it's absolutely delightful to be here and it's such a big question.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to start off really small, but at the moment I'm in Johannesburg, South Africa and I spend my time between Europe mostly London and South Africa, which is a really strange dichotomy We've got Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere going on at the same time, southern hemisphere going on at the same time and in terms of what I'd like you to know about and I'm sure we'll get into discussion around it, is that I founded a business called Mowbray by Design almost just over 19 years ago in London, and I specialize in future-focused leadership, and it's been an extraordinary journey. Over these last 19 years, the markets changed, businesses changed our focus and, I guess, our technologies changed enormously, and so too have I, and so have my clients. So it's been an incredible ride. But before that, I started my career in investment, banking and technology technology and then global executive search, which really gave me the foundations for understanding business, how things work, how people work, how cultures work in organizations, and I think it was the years in executive search that really focused my attention on working with leaders and organizations to help them to grow, and it sparked an enduring golden thread in my life that's connected me ever since and, as I mentioned, I started off coaching pretty generically, I guess, and as the years went by, I noticed various different topics and things going on in the world that I really believe that people need to understand and be able to filter the world through in order to be able to lead more effectively and build enduringly thriving businesses.
Speaker 3:One of those things was futures thinking, and I ended up studying it and in fact, I went back twice for an amazing course which really gives an insight into how to build multiple futures in the world, because, of course, our old school strategies of building a linear approach to the next one three, five years just don't hack it in our world of work today. And then I really dug into things like what is complexity, what are we dealing with, what is uncertainty? And all of that sort of and behavioral science, of course, really understanding why we do what we do, and all of the latest discoveries and developments around neuroscience, which are enormously helpful in understanding ourselves and being able to shift and change, which can be really tricky. And as a result of that, I ended up publishing a book last year the very end of last year I was in such a hurry to get it out called Relevant, future-focused Leadership.
Speaker 3:And before that, I was lucky enough to collaborate probably one of the biggest collaborative projects I've ever worked on with 30 other authors in a book called Uncertainty, which we published at the beginning of last year, really having a look at what's going on in the world and what uncertainty is all about and how we can deal with it across a bunch of topics, and I guess I got the bug for writing. So at the moment I'm busy recording the audible, the audio book, for my book Relevant, future-focused Leadership, and I have to say, if anyone has an extra dose of courage to send me while I'm doing it, it's quite an interesting process to go through. Yeah, that should be out, I would imagine, by the end of August, so I'm really looking forward to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, congratulations. Thank you for sharing so much, because, at the end of the day, all the guests that come on or the audience that's paying attention, they want to know a little bit about us, and I think that's important. As a leader, how much do you let people know and what don't you let people know? So when I grew up, it was keep them separate. Don't let the people that you lead know too much about you. Don't show too much of you. So when you think of leadership today and the way it's changed, future focused, what's changed about the role of a leader in the last decade and I know there's a lot what would you share that you've noticed that has changed the most in the last decade?
Speaker 3:I think the greatest thing for me was the greatest change, certainly in my. I noticed it with my clients and, bizarrely, when I took Futures and Strategic Foresight course, I suddenly sat in this class and I thought, oh my goodness, there's an academic school of thinking philosophy around the way that. I naturally think I've always been slightly ahead of the curve in terms of connecting dots. I've always been deeply curious and in around about 2010, I came across conscious leadership and conscious business and I needed an ICF qualification. I just thought it's about time I connect the dots and do the right thing. So I'd been looking for a way to ICF, but to be honest, you know, this sort of bog standard roots just didn't really float my boat and I was looking for something that was deeply transformative for us as human beings. And, of course, if we change as people, we change as leaders. It's as simple as that, and I realized, of course, long ago, especially when I was in executive search, that we might have a great cognitive understanding and intelligence around things. Many people know many things, but the question is, are those many people doing those many things? And that's the trickiest part. The hardest part is to change ourselves. So when I came across conscious leadership and conscious business. It just blew my mind. I realized that there was a far quicker, more direct way of actually helping ourselves and our organizations and teams to change.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there's a lot of lip service to all the right stuff. Are people doing it? My clients do, because I always joke and say I perhaps don't experience the worst of leadership because they probably wouldn't want to work with somebody like me, wouldn't want to work with somebody like me. I'm very much interested in working with people who are forging a new way forward and are interested in building a better world today for tomorrow. I can remember being in Boston in 2012 for the fourth annual Conscious Capitalist Conference and meeting people like John Mackey of Whole Foods Market before he sold out to Amazon and various others and just thinking, yeah, this is the only way forward.
Speaker 3:And there's a great thing that happens in language and in the press and in job descriptions and I guess I attract that kind of thing because I'm an ex headhunter and when you start seeing language popping into the regular use around leadership, around careers and progression and things like that, then you realize it's caught a wave and I think after the markets crashed in September 2008, people just didn't recover. Of course it was a massive thing Countries were staggering around and not doing terribly well, but the average person really didn't recover. And I think that the need to bring in humanity back into leadership in our organizations is vital, not only because to do the right thing but actually do it. And I think today, with the transparency around social media, it's very difficult to pretend to be something we're not.
Speaker 3:That might have been so much easier before the advent of social media and the way that it's an extension of our arms everywhere and with everything that we do. So I think it's unavoidable and fundamentally I think that people are good and ultimately there's a bright, smart way of doing things that we don't have to sell our souls in the process. Then we're going to pick up and run with it.
Speaker 2:Wow, yes, thank you for sharing. You shared a lot of great information that I love to unpack Businesses, organizations, bottom lines are important, but we're starting to get back to our customers, want some level of humanity and integrity built back into that. And as you look at organizations, how do you get a leader that's so focused on bottom line spreadsheets, profit margins, to have more humanity and to taking care of the team? Because I've noticed over time that's become a challenge. Is it the profit or is it the people, or how do you do both effectively?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's interesting, ron, because I think of myself. I'm a keynote speaker, I run intense masterclasses for executive teams and I coach individual leaders from various different countries, and I think that, as a practitioner, we need to pick our clients. I'm not the type of person who's really interested in going in and trying to change somebody into something that they're not. I would rather pick the clients that I'm going to work with, saying that I probably have the luxury of doing that, because it's unlikely that a client who thinks like that would want to work with somebody like me, somebody like me. But do you understand that if we are working in an organization, we're faced with the challenge of having to report to somebody like that or to work alongside as a pair?
Speaker 3:I think the interesting thing is, either we often look at the person or we look at the behaviors and we don't look at the system that has built the conditions for that to exist. And I'm much more interested in systems thinking and actually looking at holes rather than divided pieces of a puzzle. And I think when we shift our focus around the system, when we build a system that actually serves the entire spectrum, from the people who work for the organization to our partners and customers and suppliers and what have you all stakeholders then addressing the system and focusing in on what we can do to shift the conditions, the affordances, the constraints, naturally shifts who we attract as an organization. It shifts our hiring policies. It shifts what goes on in terms of leadership. So I don't think there's any point in trying to fix something that's broken If it's just an individual or a way of being or a way of doing somebody hired that person and somebody hired that person into the culture.
Speaker 3:So what is it about the system that still supports that, and if it supports it with that person, it's likely to support it with other leaders in the organization. And the interesting thing is we've all been focusing so much on burnout and mental health issues in the last, especially since the pandemic. The brutal truth is, if you sit in any meeting with a group of people in business either your team or other people, it doesn't really matter 38% of the people that you're looking at and you may be one of them are suffering from, or reporting, I should say, burnout symptoms and also self-reporting mental health conditions. So I think it was in 2019 that the World Health Organization redefined burnout as an organizational issue. In other words, it's not a weakness or a failing in the individual. It's a failing in the system in which they're working.
Speaker 3:And the tricky thing is that, by the time we're suffering from burnout symptoms, it's very difficult to make the types of decisions that we need to make for ourselves.
Speaker 3:We might not have the self-confidence any longer.
Speaker 3:We might not have the wherewithal to be able to stand up to a toxic culture or a toxic boss or a toxic way of doing things. So it's very tricky, but I would urge anyone who finds themselves in a toxic environment and who just finds their self-confidence whittling away over time, find yourself another culture to work in, because the possibility of you changing the system is unlikely and unless your boss moves on and that's just one particular person if the system supports that kind of thinking and being and doing, it's very likely that somebody very similar, perhaps with different issues, would come in and to replace them. So I would extract yourself, work out what you want in life and be very purposeful about where you put your energy and your time, because you've only got this one life and this moment in time has disappeared. You and I are spending it together today, but it's gone and we're not getting it back. So I think we've got to be pretty sure about making sure that we're in a robust condition to make the right decisions for ourselves.
Speaker 2:Wow, I love that you leaned into systems, because most people want to try to change people and there's a system that allows that to take place, and you're exactly right. And so, as people listening and watching, how do you separate? Or do you separate systems or cultures, or they're one in the same, or is the system creating the culture? Because I hear a lot of the word culture in workplaces and organizations. I don't hear systems a lot, and I know it because I'm a practitioner. But I don't hear that in corporations they don't normally use the word systems. How do we help them understand the difference between the two, if there is?
Speaker 3:Nothing exists in an abyss. Everything is interconnected, everything is emergent, everything is changing. So one way of really having a look at an organization to see whether perhaps it's a system's I don't want to call it failure, because the system's obviously producing a profit and it's supporting people who have jobs and clients and all of that good stuff, which is what business is all about. But if we look at a very high attrition rate, if we look at a very high burnout rate, it means that the system has supported that kind of thinking in their leadership for quite some time and the system will continue to support that. Often leaders come into an organization and they themselves end up suffering from burnout because it's not the kind of culture that actually serves people. Fundamentally it does the opposite. So I think when we look at a culture that's constantly churning out burnt out souls- or high attrition rates or it's very easy to see where you're going to find some systems issues.
Speaker 3:And the key thing there is whether the leaders of that organization are prepared to start looking at the systems and identifying. Because it's very costly to start looking at the systems and identifying. Because it's very costly, you know, high rates of attrition, the cost of bringing somebody on, hiring somebody. They're certainly not productive or contribute a great deal in the first three to six months, maybe a year. It's very costly to bring on new people constantly and most organizations are really trying to focus on reducing attrition rates, reducing loss of good people.
Speaker 3:The other thing is that there's a lot of research to show that in a toxic culture call it a toxic system the good people are the first people to go because they haven't been worn down yet by the system and they still have a sense of what's right for them and the strength to move on, of what's right for them and the strength to move on. But of course, when we stay in a toxic system for a long period of time, it does wear away at us and our self-confidence is eroded and it just all becomes pretty tricky. And I know from my executive search days that, working with people who'd worked in a toxic environment for a long time, it was very difficult for them to extract themselves and move on to something else. Now I'm referring to toxic environment just because it's probably a lazy catch-all, but if we're looking at multiple difficult leaders in one organization, we're probably looking at a system that supports it.
Speaker 2:You wrote a book on future focus, dealing with conscious leadership. A new leader coming in and being able to really be future focused in the world is at Mach 2 speed. It's changing very rapidly. What is the advice that you share with leaders that are listening, saying I hear it, but what do I do with it at the earliest stages? How do I start to get to this growth of being future focused when it's changing almost like every day?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's why I wrote this book, ron. The crazy thing is and there's some brilliant, there's a brilliant paper that was released a few years ago to show the link between uncertainty and acute stress response little that we can hang our hat on and have some sense of a prediction of what the future might hold. And wherever we have complexity we have uncertainty. And wherever we have uncertainty we have an acute stress response. So acute stress response isn't just oh, I'm stressed and anxious, it's fight, flight, freeze or appease.
Speaker 3:We're in that constant state of either trying to appease a difficult boss or customer or partner whoever we're trying to appease, or we're in that constant state of either trying to appease a difficult boss or customer or partner whoever we're trying to appease, or we're fighting, we're in a conflict situation, or we're running, you know, perhaps getting all the work done, but just staying out of the way and constantly moving on. Or freeze, we're just rabbits in the headlight just trying to keep our head down and hope nobody notices us. And it's funny, in different situations we react differently and I think that the foundation of all of this is to know ourselves well, and often I'll get on a stage and I'll say something audacious and ridiculous know thyself and then get thyself the hell out of the way.
Speaker 3:Because, fundamental to any look, we spend a lot of our times at work. If we get to know ourselves really well, it means that we can start mitigating some of those areas that might need improvement or growth or learning and we can really start to hone in on the things that we're great at and to build the skills that we need for the future. So the reason why I wrote this book is, fundamentally, there are five key lenses on the world. We often think of how we understand the world as mental models. For me, that's just too confining and I think of them more as lenses on the world because with every experience that we've had in life, we actually view the next experience through the lens of the old experience. And of course, we've got all of these multiple lenses and there's no way that I could ever have been behind your lenses or you behind mine. We might be able to relate, we had similar experiences or understand the world in similar ways, but there's just no way that you can actually walk in another person's shoes, understanding our own lenses and also understanding what is no longer useful to us. We developed a strategy for coping with X at some point in our lives and we're still running everything through that lens, even though today it's no longer the situation or appropriate. So I think that the first job that we all have as people out there in the business world as leaders or wannabe leaders or entrepreneurs or investors or whatever we are is to know ourselves extremely well and the five lenses that I talk about in the book.
Speaker 3:And I run through all sorts of topics in the book which get really open people's minds into what's going on and how to do it with more agility, with more ease, with more calmness, with more wisdom and to just let that sympathetic nervous system just calm down and to create space between what's going on around us and our response to it. And that can only happen when we get to know ourselves well enough to be able to go ah, that old thing, I don't need to go into fight, flight, freeze or appease around this. I can actually have a look at it, I can consider it, I can perhaps do my response and sleep on it. I think that's one of the best strategies Sleep on a difficult decision and we typically wake up with a bit of clarity. So I run through a whole bunch of things that really help to open people's minds to the power they have over their own consciousness, their lenses on the world, how they perceive and understand things.
Speaker 3:And then the five lenses that I really focus on in part four of the book. The first one is conscious leadership and team coherence. How do we know ourselves? How do we work well with other people? Of course it's an age old topic and it's certainly something we've seen throughout the ages people working well or not well together.
Speaker 3:The second is all about complexity, understanding complexity itself. Often, with complexity, there is no. It's like a ball of wool with no ends to it. We cannot find the beginning, we cannot unravel it to find the end, and it may be combined with other situations that are just complicated, and we can solve that with money and expertise and throwing some time at something to fix it. But complexity, we should just watch and wait. In fact, watch alertly and wait and see how it starts unraveling itself, a bit like the beginning of the pandemic when we had no idea which direction it might go. And how do we make sense, sense making, how do we make our way through the world with more ease?
Speaker 3:Then we look at futures thinking. What is futures thinking? What is strategic foresight? Why do we need to think in multiple futures and not be attached to any of them, because I think one of the trickiest things is we want something to be a certain way and we ignore all of the signals that are going on around us to tell us actually that's not what's going on, this other thing's happening, and then we find it very difficult to change. Of course. Then we also look at agile thinking and innovative behaviors and organizations. How can we use our emotional agility, cognitive agility, to actually think in much more diverse ways, to deal with, you know, to problem solve, to look at complex issues, to make decisions which is very tricky if we have no idea what may happen next and how to build cultures of innovative ideation and experimentation and behaviors in our organizations so that, instead of it being something that we do on the side or, you know, a lot of organizations use M&A to acquire you know, new innovations and bring them into their organizations.
Speaker 3:But how do we create an environment where people can do that and thrive?
Speaker 3:Because often people coming in with new ideas are shut down or talked over or ignored or whatever the case may be. And yet we often proclaim that we need innovation in our organizations and yet we don't have the systems that actually support it. And, of course, the one that I've mentioned already, that we've talked about a little of those five lenses, is systems thinking and how critical that is to understand how everything is interconnected and how something happening in something that may seem unrelated can instantly produce an effect in ways that we might not have predicted. So yeah, really. So everything leading up to these five ways of filtering what's going on around us so that we can make better decisions, create some space in our own minds to be able to evaluate things. Better decisions, create some space in our own minds to be able to evaluate things. So, in a funny way, I guess it's thinking slow and fast. How do we create that space for ourselves and just calm everything down and make the right decisions for ourselves?
Speaker 2:I love the direction that you're going. You're spending a lot of time on paying attention to yourself, getting to know thyself, because oftentimes you're so used to helping others and never really take a look in the mirror and say what is it that I do for me to be a better leader? Because at some point in my mind, if my team gets better and I don't, eventually I won't be good enough to lead them. And so you spend a lot of time speaking around how important it is for leaders to really pay attention to their growth, their development, how they show up and how they're creating a system that either is very healthy and productive or just the opposite of what they want. And so they want results. But they don't pause to say am I creating a system that allows? Am I even a person that can do it and can thrive in that space and produce that space? How do you help me, as a leader, begin to pay attention to me, and how do I create a system that's productive?
Speaker 3:I think the beautiful thing is when we shift and change everything around us must. It's physics, it's as simple as that.
Speaker 3:I shift and I grow by one degree. Everything around me must respond and react to that. So the key thing is always starting with our own development. There's no way that I think, as somebody who coaches individuals and teams, that we cannot start with that. Otherwise, we're just simply advising and yes, we do a lot of that too. However, ultimately, if you've got a bunch of people who are self-aware enough to be able to certainly manage themselves and work well together, then whatever comes along is so much easier to deal with the external issue, because there will always be external issues.
Speaker 3:Whatever we think of as our greatest challenges today, you know we can almost guarantee we'll replace one of those with something else tomorrow. And with every new, I guess, solution we come up with, you know some wonderfully beautiful solution to a really tricky problem we have today. We're also creating unintended consequences or unknown consequences in the future which we will have to deal with, some of them in our lifetimes or in our tenure, and others will be left for our children and grandchildren to try and tidy up. I just think of Tupperware and plastics, right, and ultimately, every time we eat a piece of fish, we're eating microplastics. I think that this nature of human beings is to want to get better at what we do, and when we realize it starts with getting ourselves out of the way, in other words, getting to know ourselves well enough, but we're not getting in our own way, then everything that we touch if it's creating the right conditions for a team to thrive, or building a business, or launching a, a product, or basically becoming way more profitable or more profitable quicker, or whatever the vision for the desired future is how we get to that point depends on our growth as human beings. And if we have a look around us, a lot of people would argue and say we've got some really toxic, hideous leaders around the world who somehow managed to achieve what I want to achieve and yes, you can get there anyway. Do they know themselves properly? Are they happy to exercise those qualities that we wouldn't want to work under? But we want to achieve the success they've achieved.
Speaker 3:Maybe I think that there comes a time where we actually look at our lives, what we're spending our time on, the impact that we're having on people around us, and, of course, we can do it in a way that actually helps other people to learn and grow and we can do it in a way that doesn't. It's a choice. The sad thing is that many people are not making an active choice. They get caught up by the system that they're in or the culture that they're in, and it's just the way things are done. You know, we used to joke when I was an executive search that if somebody had been with an organization for six years, they were institutionalized. In other words, they couldn't separate their own beliefs and ideas about the world from that of the culture of their organization.
Speaker 3:And I think we should always do a little check on ourselves.
Speaker 3:Are these my beliefs?
Speaker 3:Is this the way that I prefer to do things?
Speaker 3:Is this the right way to do it for me? And then, of course, we talk about the people who work for us being productive and engaged, and, rather than taking all of their sick leave every year, they're actually giving more of themselves because they want to, and there are powerful reasons for that. And how do we ignite that in others? In the way that it feels so wonderful to be purposeful ourselves, because there is something extraordinary when we're connected to what we're doing and it's purposeful and meaningful, and we really feel like we're doing something valuable, whatever that might be, and I hate putting people in boxes and saying this is right and that's wrong. Every person's situation is completely different, as we know, those lenses are very individual, but where we choose to put our energy and how we choose, not forgetting that every culture that we join will shape us in some way, shape or form, I think we need to make much more active choices about who we allow to shape us and in what way, and we can only do that with that self-awareness and self-knowledge.
Speaker 2:Yes, and so, if you're listening, self-awareness and self-knowledge and who are you allowed to shape you Because whether it's intentional or unintentional, it does happen. And so just being more mindful of the active decisions that you're making I love that you're talking about, are you active in the decisions that you're making is really huge. So you think about the information and how much you've brought to the table and you're going from a headhunter to the practitioner now and the work that you do. I'm going to shift a little bit for us here, for leaders that are listening, how important has mentoring been for you in your path and your journey?
Speaker 3:I'm a big fan of mentors. I mean we need to really understand what mentorship is and what sponsorship is and what coaches are. They're very different things. So a sponsor typically has some skin in the game in your success. So not only will they have been there and done it as a mentor has and be able to give you very practical advice about how to deal with a situation that they've dealt with before, but sponsors will actually get up mentor has and be able to give you very practical advice about how to deal with a situation that they've dealt with before. But sponsors will actually get up and make the introductions. They will arrange the lunch, arrange the coffee, arrange the Zoom meeting, arrange the, whatever it takes, and actually be active in helping you to get ahead.
Speaker 3:Mentors often, I think sometimes we expect a lot out of mentors and ultimately they have knowledge and wisdom and insight and experience to impart. Not all of them will act as a sponsor as well and actually actively get us into the right situations to meet the right people or the right environments. So there's a bit of a difference there. And, of course, coaches you know, if we look at the sort of most formal, I guess, definition of coach, it's that you would never tell anybody what to do or how to do it. So it's very different, the opposite of mentorship, as I said earlier, I've now had this business for 19 years and the world has changed.
Speaker 3:I've changed, my clients have changed enormously in 19 years. It's been an extraordinary journey and during that time, every now and again, I just get so frustrated with myself and I just think, oh, I need somebody who's an expert at X or I need somebody to help me to get over myself and just get over this speed hunt that I'm facing. I'll actively look for that because I know that I've got to the point where, you know, I think all learning sort of goes in almost in stages. We sort of ramp up and we've got this great new knowledge and then we apply it and we need that time settling in and figuring it out and being practical about it, because knowledge is useless without action, because we learn nothing and we don't really know what to do with it right. So we always sort of have a little platter where we sort of figure out. Then we're ready for the next thing. And I don't know if you've noticed this for yourself and with your clients, but I've certainly noticed this is that when I'm ready for the next thing, it's unbearably uncomfortable. I'm ready to learn something new. I'm ready to leapfrog whatever the thing is that's holding me back, or a more complex project, or take on a different culture and just open my mind. I know I'm ready, and it feels incredibly uncomfortable. I'm ready to go and I think we all have this amazing life force energy, this desire to create.
Speaker 3:To my father used to make me laugh because I always used to say to him, dad, I want to do something more creative, and he was a chartered accountant and he used to say gosh, people, playing with numbers is the most creative thing on the planet. And he's right you can get unbelievably creative with numbers. So you know, I don't mean necessarily creative industries or go off and become a second van gogh or whatever, but to take that life force energy that we all have, that wants to create, to manifest things, to learn, to master things and to grow. The minute that we stop applying that to whatever, what's next, whatever's next, whatever we presents itself, almost that energy almost seems to come back in on ourselves and it causes all sorts of problems because we start meddling in stuff that doesn't need fixing and we start meddling with people and trying to direct other people's lives and you know, we do all sorts of things that we hear about in toxic leadership, right? So how do we take that energy and keep it moving?
Speaker 3:And I think we need other people to do that for sure, and I've always actively looked. I know when I'm ready for the next thing and I know when I'm ready for the next big learning, and then I know I need people to help me to embed it. So, yeah, I think it's almost like a brain itch that won't be scratched when I get to that point. Yeah, I truly believe in all three of those. And then, of course, actual formal learning. You know we don't talk about learning, unlearning and relearning as a nice to have. It's an absolute necessity for ourselves in our own growth and development, but, of course, in terms of our businesses, because if we're not doing that, everybody else is and we're literally standing still. But we've heard that adage so many times. But I think, first and foremost, if we do it for ourselves, the natural byproduct of that is that we're doing it for our teams, we're doing it for our organization or our own business or whatever we're involved in. So those are the knock-on effects.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, phenomenal information, unpackpacked a lot on the timeframe that we spent together. We have two questions left. One will be for you to promote the book and how people reach you, but before I go there, we're talking in the green room before we really got started.
Speaker 2:What I've been noticing with our clients in the US is that the shift in the mindset of leaders how they show up, how do they take care of their workforce and they're frustrated between hybrid coming back to the office COVID they haven't recovered or people changing jobs a lot faster than they anticipated and just the way that they have to be a different leader they seem to be a little more frustrated and more short-patience right now as leaders. I hear some saying, hey, if they don't like it here, there's the door. So that language has shown up a lot in the US. How do you address the system in that process? Because they are frustrated and I get it, I understand it and we're all trying to recover from COVID and I don't think we're fully recovered from that yet. What would be some advice if there's a leader that's listening, that's in that space and they don't want to be that person that they're becoming because of the system?
Speaker 3:Well, they're part of the system. So you know, we can't just blame the system. Right, if we're in a system, we're part of it, we're the thing that's keeping it alive. So I think that the other thing is I would want to reframe things for those leaders, because we're never going to recover from COVID and I don't mean the actual disease itself or the virus itself, although that'll certainly be around for some time and I'm sure there'll be other pandemics in our lifetimes, certainly be around for some time and I'm sure there'll be other pandemics in our lifetimes.
Speaker 3:There's no recovering or going back and I think that anyone who talks like that or thinks like that really needs to start reframing. So I would use a lot of reframing to help people to put things into the context of if you look at your life as this is the starting point and what's occurred has occurred there's obviously number one acceptance. That's really important. If you've done some not so great things, then forgiveness for self and asking it from others and draw a line and go okay. And I think this is the beautiful thing about the work that we do. Ron, coaching is about. It's not therapy, it's not going backwards, it's not trying to unpack why. It's really saying okay, here we are, where do you want to be? And I think the beautiful thing is that when you start working with things like futures, thinking, what you do is, instead of working towards some end goal that has a specific criteria, what you do is you plant an anchor firmly in the future with a golden thread between you and it, and it's kind of broad and it's a picture or an idea or a sense of where you want to be. And every decision you make today is connected by this golden thread between you and that desired future. And I think it's really important in decision-making, where we have complexity and it's very difficult to know the right thing to do, and often we would. I mean, the research shows us that we would rather make a decision to do something really awful, you know, but at least we know what the outcome will be, than to make a decision where we have absolutely no idea what the outcome will be, and so that keeps people very stuck. So there's a lot of reframing. If people are thinking like that and they're talking like that, then we've got to reframe what's happened. We've got to reframe what the future looks like. We need to make good friends with complexity, fall in love with it or at least make friends with it, because it's here to stay, it isn't going anywhere, and there comes an acceptance of okay, this is where we're at and these things are coming. We're right here in this new era of work.
Speaker 3:I think of the next 10 years as being quite extraordinary in terms of the change that we're going to experience.
Speaker 3:I certainly don't say that to frighten people, but we know, with the advancements in technology, the convergence is right here right now, and I think sometimes, you know, change is slower than we expect it, than we think it's going to be.
Speaker 3:But looking back, we're just amazed at how much change actually occurred over the last 10 years, or, you know, over the last five in the case of COVID.
Speaker 3:So I think that this thing of actually really coming back to knowing ourselves well and knowing how to deal with uncertainty, knowing how to actually build a vision for the future, putting an anchor into something that we desire and keeping that tension on that golden thread taught so that our decision making, all the macro and micro decisions on route, are in line with that, that sort of true north I know it's a bit of a probably a lazy way of describing it, but that connection to something that isn't just a goal of a car or a bonus or a thing or a house or a small goals, but a bigger vision of the life we want to live and start living it today, because we're all immensely capable. It just takes a decision to shift how we frame things for ourselves and the people around us, and the minute that we shift and change the world around us must. It's pure physics, it's a beautiful thing and it works.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love it, Phenomenal. So, as people are listening and we're coming to a close, is there a particular book you'd like to highlight? And, once you do that, where do they find it? And then, how do they reach out to you? If someone wants to connect with you, we know where's the best place for them to find you.
Speaker 3:Oh, thank you, Ron. So my book is relevant Future Focused Leadership and you can get it on Amazon and I think it's on all of the other online retailers as well.
Speaker 3:And my website, probably the easiest way to connect with me and have a look and see what I do. It's mobraybydesigncom, and I've had my head down in the last week just polishing up my keynote pages and talking about the masterclasses that I do, so I've been sort of knee deep in all of this, which has been very necessary. Yeah, everything's there so keynotes, masterclasses, coaching, and you know I'm a great believer that all good things start with a conversation. So reach out, get in touch or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Speaker 2:Yes, I love it. Louise, there's something that you continue to say throughout your conversations that I really appreciate, and it's two things that's showing up is your self-discipline and personal accountability. As I listen to your language and your conversation, it starts with you as your self-discipline and personal accountability. You know you said I had to put my head down. It's necessary. Hey, I have to reframe, reshape. All those things are things that you take ownership of, what you can do. How valuable has that been to you for the self-discipline and personal accountability?
Speaker 3:It's probably been the most important factor throughout my career, you know, when I was in the investment banking sector and the technology sector, and I didn't always get it right, and I think today what I know is the discomfort I feel when I don't run with that. What I know is the discomfort I feel when I don't run with that, if I give all my power away and I'm ultimately saying I'm a victim in this world and I'm certainly not, and nor is anybody else. And I think that the only way to actually be the creator of your life if we just think of it in perhaps rather cheesy terms is to take responsibility for what we're up to and the impact it has, because everything for every action there is an impact somewhere. So for me, I know that it's probably not the week I wanted to spend digging into making sure that website's been running for 18 years. It's the last thing I want to do is go back in and every now and again and have to sort to update and add new keynotes and masterclasses and things like that.
Speaker 3:I don't want to be doing that. I want to be working with people, but it's got to be done and if I don't and I farm it onto somebody else. It's just a very practical example. I'm probably not going to like what they've done, simply because it needs to be in my voice, because that's what I'm selling. So it's one of those things I can't farm out. I can't give it away and then have it go wrong and then blame the person and be powerless in that sort of situation.
Speaker 3:So some things we just need to knuckle down and do, and I always laugh because it's so good when they're done, because they get another 12 minutes, but there are some things we absolutely if we need to ensure that the tone, the energy behind it it's representative of what we're looking to attract and for me, I'm definitely looking always to attract the type of clients who are wanting to build something in a way that is visionary, that they've got audacious, big fat goals. They absolutely want to make sure that they're not standing in the way of their and their team and their organization success. You know, those are the types of people I want to work with. So little things like that are important.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Thank you for joining, thank you for hanging in there with us, and for everyone that's paying attention or listening to us or viewing it, thank you for joining. Thank you for hanging in there with us, and for everyone that's paying attention and listening to us and viewing it, thank you for hanging in. Phenomenal conversation, just the insights. I love the system, language and you know the accountability and really you brought a lot of value to all of our listeners. So thank you for doing that, you know, and for us, ron Harvey, again, vice President Global Corps, and we spend this entire time on this podcast.
Speaker 2:It's really having conversations that you normally don't hear. In some rooms we just unpack and we go wherever the conversation goes. So thank you for being with us and until next time, luis and I will sign off. We hope you enjoyed the podcast and if you ever need to reach either one of us or if you need me to put you in contact with her, I'd be happy to do that. I believe in collaborating across all walks of life, but I think there's enough for everybody to enjoy life. So let's be intentional, let's take care of other people, let's look out and be able to share what we know. So until next time we're going to sign off and thank you for joining us with Unpacked with Ron Harvey.
Speaker 1:Well, we hope you enjoyed this edition of Unpacked Podcast with leadership consultant Ron Harvey. Remember to join us every Monday as Ron unpacks sound advice, providing real answers for real leadership challenges. Until next time, remember to add value and make a difference where you are, for the people you serve, because people always matter.
